Arts and Entertainment

Dreams have been a subject of fascination in literature and art since the very earliest writings of man. What’s more is they are not only the subject of fiction, philosophy, mythology and theology, but also of history. In the Herodotus Histories, it is recounted that in ancient Greece the Delphic oracle was said to have prophetic visions and dreams. After the Spartans were defeated at the battle of Thermopoly in approximately 480 B.C. the Athenians heard of the Persian’s coming and consulted the oracle at Delphi. She told the Athenians:

“Why do you sit and wait for death and doom? Flee to the furthest part of the world where the wooden wall of Zeus will defend you and your children.” Herodotus Histories Book 7 Lines 140-143

The Greeks took the meaning of the ‘wooden walls’ to mean their ships, and so they set sail: Athens was sacked, but its people saved. This is an example of a historical account of a dream that warned the people of Athens of imminent destruction and proved to be their salvation. Interestingly, the name assigned to the traitor who showed the Persians the hidden pass in Thermopoly, and allowed them to surround the Greeks is ‘Euphailtes’ which means ‘Nightmare’. Whether this was the actual name of the individual is debatable, but it seems more likely that Herodotus chooses to name this figure in order to convey as special association. Nightmares are frightening, they are inescapable, they are inevitable. Euphailtes was the downfall of the 300.

In Ancient Greece dreams that proved prophetic or visionary were an accepted reality, they occur in historical documentation and are accepted as motivators and premonitions. Now, they are viewed less mystically, but still with the same degree of interest. Modern films, such as ‘The Matrix’, use the idea that the world is an artificial construction, much like a dream. In ‘The Matrix’ the leader of those that are ‘free’ from the dream is called ‘Morpheus’, who in Greek mythology was the god of dreams and sleep. Similarly films such as ‘Inception’ take a deep exploration of the subconscious and dreaming mind. Again in ‘Inception’ dreams can be artificially created by ‘architects’ who build dream-worlds for the ‘dreamers’. Ariadne1 asks her mentor Cob:

‘How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that it’s reality?’

To which Cob replies:

‘Well dreams, they feel real while we’re in them right? It’s only when we wake up that we realise there was actually something strange…’

Here the idea of the illusionary verisimilitude of dreams is hinted at, and this is a technique that has been used in countless plays, novels and poems throughout history. In the second version of Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ the play begins with a different opening in which a lord and his servants stumble on the unconscious Christopher Sly. The lord immediately recognises that Sly is a drunken loser, and proposes a trick: that Sly wake up in the palace, clad in royal garments, and that everyone call him by the name of ‘Petruchio’ and allow him to believe he is dreaming, and that in the dream he is a nobleman. The lord remarks:

‘Would not the beggar then forget himself?’

And this proves true. Sly, when he believes he is dreaming (even though he isn’t) is able to achieve things he failed at in life. He becomes the man able to ‘tame’ the shrew and win Kate, which no other man is able to do. His own belief sets him free. Though he isn’t in a dream world, he behaves as if he is in one, and this leads him to success. When he wakes up at the end of the play and is once more Christopher Sly, he is no longer sure of what his reality is.

Shakespeare (and other writers of the same period including Calderon) uses the dream in the play in order to allow characters to question their reality, and hence, for the audience to question theirs. In Calderon’s play ‘Life’s A Dream’ several of the characters on stage refer to the play as a ‘dream’. The clown Clarion, upon his death bed, remarks:

‘Strange, it feels like I’m waking up,’

This is potentially an allusion to the temporality of existence. In the 17th Century the afterlife was seen as permanence: it was eternal. Physical existence on the other hand was fleeting, and hence, more like a dream. At one point Clarion, and the Prince of Poland, Sigismund, are imprisoned together. The rebels come to free Sigismund, but mistake Clarion for him. They immediately ask what his demands are, to which the Clown ludicrously replies:

‘Steaks shall grow on trees
And a cathedral shall be carved
From Gorgonzola cheese’

The rebels accept this without question. However, the real Sigismund then arrives and Clarion immediately defers without resistance. The clown is the ‘lowest’ character in the play in terms of social hierarchy, but a moment he ascends to the level of a prince. The fact he immediately gives up the position without any attempt to deceive the rebels once the real Sigismund arrives could be a testimony to character, or alternatively could be a reflection of the temporality of dreams.

In Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, dreams are used somewhat differently however. Previously we have seen them used to forewarn, to empower (in the case of Sly), and to question. But in Book 4 of ‘Paradise Lost’ Satan uses the dream as a means to corrupt Eve:

“…him there they found
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams;”
Book 4 lines 799-803

There is also a distinctly sexual overtone: he is attempting to reach the ‘organs’ of her ‘fancy’ i.e.’ of her fantasies. The dream is destructive, as later it inspires Eve to consider the temptation of the Tree of Knowledge. The dream leads her astray, its ‘phantasms’ and ‘illusions’ are the creation of the Devil designed to appeal to her inner subconscious desires and urges.

There are many more examples of dreams and how they are used in literature, films and art which I have not even begun to cover. They are used as Framed Narratives, as disclaimers of veracity, and to suggest either divine inspiration, or devilish persuasion. Dreams will never lose their potency or their ability to inspire. Even today musicians, writers and artists use dreams, trance-states and drug-induced visions for the starting points of their work, and huge swathes of psychological research is devoted to the study of what we dream, and more importantly perhaps, why.